Letters to the Editor: Readers continue to speak out on Iran deal

The Obama White House has paved the way to a nuclear bomb for Iran, whether in 10 years or less, increasing exponentially the existential threat against us.

By LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Updated: JULY 23, 2015 22:06
Letters (photo credit: REUTERS)
Letters
(photo credit: REUTERS)
US President Barack Obama has said that he is prepared to go “further than any other administration’s gone before” in order to provide Israel with additional US security assurance (“PM: Why would US compensate Israel for a good Iran deal?” July 20). But no other administration has so blatantly or malevolently destroyed Israel’s qualitative edge as has this deal.
The Obama White House has paved the way to a nuclear bomb for Iran, whether in 10 years or less, increasing exponentially the existential threat against us. No modest, incremental increase in US military support, such as that which Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter might bring, will alter this fundamental sellout.
The only purpose for this new-speak is to attempt to buy Israel’s silence in the forthcoming discussions in Congress – although it is now clear that Congress has been seriously emasculated by the UN Security Council, reneging on all previous resolutions condemning Iran for breaking its commitments regarding arms control.
To think that our people and our government would fall for this amateurish ploy is an insult to our intelligence.
We all now understand the profound perfidy of this administration’s game plan, and it is one for which Israel’s security is unimportant, and its survival negotiable. I pray we will have the wisdom and courage to face this unprecedented challenge, united and strong.
HARVEY LITHWICK
Meitar
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recalcitrant interjection into America’s political system is absolutely reprehensible.
The man does not dictate, enunciate or execute US foreign policy, yet he is at it again with his vigorous criticism of last week’s Iranian nuclear agreement.
America and Iran have finally established a dialogue not seen in 35 years. From this, perhaps the Middle East can for once settle down.
President Barack Obama has repeatedly assured Israel that it will be shielded by America’s nuclear and military umbrella.
In the doctrine of collective self-defense, an attack on Israel is an attack on the US. An American deterrence mechanism protecting Israel from attack by a belligerent third party is therefore established.
Far-reaching geopolitical significance and implications derived from this agreement go far beyond the accord itself.
The level of cooperation exercised among the US, China and Russia in forging a consensus on the course of action to be taken in response to the potential development of Iran’s nuclear program is astoundingly remarkable. US-Russia relations could be held to improve to the point of working out a deal over Ukraine. The US and China could covenant a peaceful pact involving the ongoing South China Sea dispute.
General relations among the three superpowers could improve to a threshold not witnessed in years. But in the meantime, Netanyahu’s media-meddling only serves to undermine and tear asunder the commitments and achievements recently negotiated. In this context, his further involvement is neither solicited nor welcomed, and most assuredly is not wanted.
EARL BEAL
Terre Haute, Indiana
I agree with every word of Stewart Weiss’s “History’s historic blunders: Add one more” (Comment & Features, July 20).
In my opinion, we can describe US President Barack Obama’s policies in a single, short sentence: We don’t negotiate with terrorists, we finance them.
Obama has sent the British foreign secretary, and now his own Secretary of Defense, to persuade Israel, Saudi Arabia and Jordan that America is their best friend, and that in dangerous situations it always will help them. Nobody believes it.
I’m pretty sure that even Obama himself doesn’t believe it.
So, as the old wisdom says, you had better believe the threats of your enemy more than the promises of your friends.
DAVID BARNER
Rishon Lezion
I remember the frequent terrorist attacks that were perpetrated against Israel in the 1960s, when I was a teenager.
Back then, terrorism was a relatively new phenomenon.
Israel was the only country to suffer and it warned other countries that if they did not do something about it, the phenomenon would spread. The world, however, ignored Israel’s advice because it was only Jews who were being murdered.
Fifty years later, the world has still not learned its lesson. Iran has made no bones about who it wants to eliminate, and Israel is not its only target.
LOUIS ZETLER
Hoshaya
Two years ago, at President Obama’s insistence, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized to Turkey over the Mavi Marmara. He later released security prisoners to cajole the Palestinians back to the peace table. But he did not, in either event, make it conditional upon the release of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard.
Last week, Obama signed on to the Iran nuclear deal but did not make it conditional upon the release of four Americans being held in Iran.
What a shame. Could it be that both Netanyahu and Obama suffer from what many said about former US president Gerald Ford, that they can’t walk and chew gum at the same time?
LEONARD KAHN
Zichron Ya’acov
In response to “German minister heads for Iran to reestablish ties” (July 20), you can fool all the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time. It’s an apt saying that will come back to make those who believe in the so called “snap-back” of sanctions rue the day it was signed – but it will then be too late.
It is ironic that Germany, one of the signers of the infamous Chamberlain’s “peace in our time,” is the first to rush to Iran to start trade before the ink on the agreement is dry. The German economics minister said in Iran that he would insist on Tehran recognizing Israel’s right to exist. What if the Iranians refuse? Is he going to go home and not reestablish ties with the greatest terrorist nation the world has ever known? Given that all the countries represented in the negations were eying with relish the many tens of billions of dollars that Iran was going to get and were straining at the leash to get their hands on some of it, perhaps none of them had the right to be in on the negotiations.
When Wendy Sherman, the US under secretary of state for political affairs and a member of the negotiating team, was taken to task for saying that “inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities would be at any time, anywhere,” she said it had merely been a “rhetorical flourish.” Ms. Sherman is also remembered as having taken part in the negotiations with North Korea. Those talks were supposed to stop Pyongyang from getting a nuclear bomb – which ended, as everybody now knows, with the North Koreans thumbing their noses at the world.
Will history repeat itself, as it has a habit of doing? Will Iran get the bomb? Can anything a public servant says now be dismissed as a rhetorical flourish?
ISADORE SOLOMONS
Beit Shemesh
We have US President Barack Obama’s word that should the Iranians renege on any of their promises, the sanctions will forthwith snap back into place.
Really? Whose? With the done deal, the other members of the P5+1 are already falling over each other in their rush to get their snouts into the Iranian trough. No verbal wizardry on the part of the American president will ever get them out again.
OSCAR DAVIES
Jerusalem